SPOTLIGHT

Throne, Baby, Throne

Popular as Game of Thrones is, Natalie Dormer, who plays cunning noblewoman Margaery Tyrell, was surprised to discover this April that the show’s medieval schemers had impressed even their modern incarnations: real-life legislators. The 31-year-old actress says that at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner she and co-star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau were “overwhelmed” by guests’ praise for the—literally—cutthroat series. The show’s shrewd power plays, Dormer coyly speculates, “went down very well on Capitol Hill.”

The actress knows her political intrigues, having played Anne Boleyn for two seasons on Showtime’s The Tudors. This fall, out of bodices for a change, she appears in Ron Howard’s Formula One film, Rush, then again in Ridley Scott’s all-star thriller The Counselor alongside Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Penélope Cruz, and Michael Fassbender. Her character is enlisted to seduce Pitt’s—oh, the drudgery of being an actress!—to extract some key intel.

On the horizon are roles in the final two Hunger Games films. Next spring Game of Thrones returns for its fourth season and Margaery’s marriage to the boyishly cruel King Joffrey. Dormer anticipates a lovely wedding gift: “Living!” she says with a laugh. “Death is an occupational hazard when you’re part of this show.”